Prometheus 6

Maybe the blogosphere has actually won, and it just can’t take “yes” for an answer. A final possibility is that the blogosphere’s preferred candidates have had trouble getting traction because the other candidates have moved in the blogosphere’s direction. This is most especially true on the Iraq war, where Senator Clinton — who took the most grief from the blogging left for her 2002 vote for the war — came to a position on the war that differed only modestly from that of Mr. Edwards.

Speaking Truth Without Power
By Ron Klain

During the last five years, no movement has had as great an impact on progressive politics as the liberal blogosphere. Built from grassroots anger over Democratic leadership support for the Iraq war in 2002, liberal bloggers have chastised party leaders who backed President Bush, causing many prominent Democrats to reverse — and even recant — their positions on the war. Just as impressively, the blog voices on the left have played a critical role in pushing less visible issues — like electronic voting machines, bankruptcy legislation and telephone companies’ liability in wiretapping programs — into the mainstream.

The ultimate measure of this shift of influence came this summer, when virtually every Democratic candidate for president attended the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, and skipped the annual convention of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Nashville.

But notwithstanding this stunning success, this week’s withdrawal by John Edwards, coming a week after the departure of Dennis Kucinich, means that both of the preferred presidential candidates of the liberal blogosphere are now out of the race. Instead, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two candidates who have drawn some of the sharpest criticism on progressive blogs, are the only ones who will make it to Super Tuesday. A similar thing happened in 2004, when Howard Dean and Wes Clark, the two candidates most strongly backed by blogs, were beaten by John Kerry, who wasn’t a blog favorite.

The blogosphere has had impressive electoral success in Senate and House races, especially in 2006. But at the presidential level, while the blogosphere has been effective in changing the political debate and the party’s direction, it has been less successful in helping its preferred candidates to victory. Why?